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Paul's Game (One-offs)
The Creeping Vine enlists a group of adventurers in destroying a crucial base of Goldweaver's military that is developing a new and powerful type of Warforged. Status *DM: Paul *PlayersBD2: **Ryan - Ornlitrix (Dragonborn Paladin) - Tank **Raymond - Attendant (Warforged Runepriest) - Healer **Bryce - Molach Luruar (Minotaur Barbarian) - Striker BD1 **Shelley - Gajdos (Drow Rogue) - Striker *Date: Saturday, March 31 *Location: Ryan's Media Room Set-Up This session will be for level 6 characters. This means you will have 2 at wills, 2 encounters, 2 dailies, 2 utilities, and 4 feats. You will add 1 to 2 different ability scores. You will not gain a level during this trial. You may assume all the same people and places from Bryce's campaign are also in this one. Your character needs to have a strong reason to dislike Goldweaver and/or his warforged, and should have a reason to be in Baldur's Gate, anywhere between brief visitor or longtime resident. Starting Loot: *Adventurer's backpack. *A magic item up to level 8. *A magic item up to level 6. *A magic item up to level 4. *2,000 gold between the whole party. BD3 Session Review *Baldur's GateBD4 RK1 **Parade All the party members entered the city during a huge parade. Goldweaver was seen at the back of it dressed to impress. Molach and Attendant left to find a quieter part of town.BD5 They ended up at the seedy tavern. **Seedy Tavern A lot of talking a stuff, the large dwarfBD6 man recruited them to fight goldweaver and let them into the circus tent. **Circus Tent Strange aromas drifted around this primal looking tent. Some members of the resistance were gathered here and set up some fancy magiks while the party went to get outfitted by Namtar. **Namtar This seedy Ratman had a very limited supply of potions, the group intimidated him into reducing the price.BD7 RK2 **Memory Ritual Fancy magic let the party members see each others memories and gave them cool powers.BD8 **Attack The tent got smashed up by huge warforged. Most of the resistance fighters died. One of them, a tiefling landy survived and fled from the sence. **Flight from BG The party opted to follow her and escaped from the city via a cameo by the poop chute.BD9 *Road to Candlekeep some travel BD10 **Pregnancy Trap A pregnant lady and her husband sat on a broken wagon and begged for help, when the party approched they were attacked by some mostly inept bandits. The lady began to give birth half way through the fight and begged for mercy, Molach killed one of the attackers, and then took out his remaining rage on the wagon, reducing it to rubble.BD11 RK3 *Candlekeep The party reached candlekeep, a castle on top of a head carved into the rocky coast. concluding that it would be easier to enter though the bottom, they climbed down the cliff face. **Travel down the cliff Climbing down proved easy. THe party then swam out to the mouth hole of the face. Orn shimmied around on the rock to avoid swimming. **Boat smashing they entered the mouth and found it a port of sorts. Some small boats were tied up on the inside. Molach released some rage my smashing them up. They went deeper into the castle and found the guard room. **Guard Room Molach barged in a flipped over the table after acousticing the guards. A fight ensued. BD12 RK4 **Shelf smashing and info gathering Molach smashed some shelves and destroyed some books. **Descent and warning from Meadow ???? **Listen at door The next floor down seemed to be a workshop of some kind, where a robed figure was busily destroying papers. Orn and Attendant rushed into the room and attempted to grab the figure, who threw down a firebomb and vanished, setting many parchments ablaze. Moloch overturned the table as the others investigated the room, which included a series of large 'bays' only one of which was occupied with the same sort of warforged which had destroyed the tent before. Upon investigation, a strange breathing noise could be heard from within the warforged's body. Moloch, assuming a living creature was trapped inside, began to smash at the body. Orn and Attendant investigated the overturned table, which featured nine colored orbs in a grid, marked with symbols corresponding to the various bays. Fallen from the table were several strange implements, including a cylinder labeled "light ray" and several mirrors, most of which were smashed when the table was overturned. As Moloch continued bashing away at the giant warforged, Orn and Attendant puzzled over the sphere grid. A key nearby indicated that 7 was bad, 8 was dangerous, and 9 was death. After a few moments, they determined a placement of light ray and mirrors which would illuminate all 9 spheres. Doing so caused the warforged in the bay to awaken, just as Moloch revealed a humanoid head and torso which spoke cryptically, asking if someone remembered the rest of a lullaby: "Be afraid of the lame, they'll inherit your legs. Be afraid of the old, they'll inherit your soul. Be afraid of the cold, they'll inherit your blood. Apres moi le deluge, after me comes the flood." BD13 All the machinery in the room activated at once and the room filled with a loud noise, growing ever louder and high-pitched. Just as a swarm of guards burst into the room, the entire facility exploded, killing all insideRK5BD14. Commentary * RK1 **I enjoyed the characterizations you gave at the very beginning. But I think you went a little too far with the railroading. The instances where you took control of our characters' actions were a little jarring to me. You did at least try to keep within the established Backstories of the characters but I still think that taking direct control of a PC (outside of domination spell effects of course) is something that probably should be avoided. * RK2 **As I mentioned after the session I really liked the Fixer Mixtures. Cool Idea. Ima steal it now. * RK3 **I really enjoyed how you spiced up this combat. Most of the time combat is a rather straightforward ordeal once it is started. The pregnancy added an ethical quandary to the mix that is usually absent. * RK4 **Maybe it is because we had to break the fight up but this combat seemed to last a little long and there were times that it seemed to me that you were a little overwhelmed with the number of characters you had to control. The combat did run reasonably smoothly and this encounter was well designed. I did like that the enemies where actually interesting and had character. You did take control of Moloch just before the fight and that did seem a little... off. I guess I just believe that the PCs should stay in control of the Players. * RK5 **The puzzle and self-destruct button were good ways to give us an easy out and the context of a one-off mini is a good way for a DM to get such a TPK out of their system **Fun fact. At level 6 there is a way for a party in Pathfinder to get out of that situation. This spell could have gotten us out of there. Four potions of that spell would have set us back 1,400 gp though. ** ---BD----A linked portal scroll could have done the same thing for 680 gp. I wish some of our smart guys had bought one(especially after the poop chute scenario) I would have suggested it, but doing so would have been completely out of character for Molach. * BD1 ** I really enjoyed playing this character. My first time to really play a guy that acts without thinking, and is ruled by emotion instead of planning and thinking. This was my favorite character from any of the minis so far. * BD2 **Our group seemed to have less cohesion than other parties so far in the minis. I'm not sure why this was, maybe I put more effort into creating the entire party for the other minis. Ray's char and mine had some history, but I never really felt like there was a reason we were all working together. Maybe just saying that "you guys are a party that was contacted" is a better way to go, like in ray's or ryan's session. * BD3 ** Again: This felt like a good amount of equipment, I think I like having a gold piece value to choose with more, but this method made picking a lot easier. * BD4 **Balder's gate did not seems as vibrant and alive as Mosstone in Ray's campaign. I think that maybe this was, again, because I know mosstone better than balder's gate. I know you railroaded us heavily to get us into the bar. I think maybe you should have just started us off in the bar instead. I did enjoy your description of goldweaver, you did a fantastic job with this, now everyone will be able to picture him for my campaign. * BD5 **Here I was a little frustrated that I had to turn away from what my character would have really done. Molach would have attacked the parade and tried to kill goldweaver then and there. I did not want to die and sit and be bored for the rest of the night though. * BD6 **I really likes your voice acting for the guys, that is something I am REALLY bad at, so I can appreciate what it brings to the game. It did seem like we were really pushed into the circus tent without asking the right questions at all. I know you were trying to push us along towards the action part, but I did not really feel like we had earned that guys trust. I would have asked more questions but I was still off balance from not attacking goldweaver. ALSO: what was the deal with the "tall" dwarves"?? * BD7 **This rat man was an interesting character, but the fact that he only had one type of item, and it cost the same amount of gold as we had seemed a little wasteful. You could have just given us the potions and no gold. We really had no incentive to haggle him down, and had no choices to make in terms of what to buy. I would have liked to see more items. I did really like your potions, they were interesting and fitting to the ratman. * BD8 **I liked this Ritual, it was of questionable power, but interesting. I liked the story element that went along with it. * BD9 **Here I ran into a problem of having to not be true to my character again. I feel like Molach would have fought those warforged, but ran into the problem of the rest of the party wanting to leave. * BD10 **The ambient rain sound was fantastic, It did way more for immersing me in the world than I thought it would. This, to me, embodies the strongest part of you session, which was the story element. * BD11 ** This fight seemed a little thrown together for me. You did not have much in the way of interesting terrain; however, it ran very smoothy. I added some to your board, I know it makes things harder to deal with, but adding some ranged guys might make things more interesting here. The meta combat stuff livened up the battle, like the birth giving. I, again, wanted to kill the rest of the guys; luckly I was able to relieve my rage on the wagon, this was fun to me. * BD12 **This fight seemed a little better than the first. The shelves made for some more interesting terrain, and the ranged guy added some extra element to the fight. I felt very restricted here, movement was a serious problem. Again, you kept it together well for the duration of the battle. Combat ran smoothy and you made some guys run away when it was clear the battle was over to keep from dragging it out. * BD13 **I enjoyed freeing this man from his prison, and I really liked his speech at the end. * BD14 **I was generally disappointed with the way this ended. It might have been because I had no idea what was going on with the lazer table and did not expect to die. It felt like I had no control over what happened. Also, i might have been upset with this because Molach was my favorite character from these minis. I never even got to use my daily powers. I had wanted to bring some of the people back as NPC in our main campaign later to help out, but now they are dead. :( * BDsummery **Thanks for putting this together for us. Overall, great job on your story, your characters and narrative was the high point of your session. I felt like you ran combat superbly well, with no delays and ending the fight when we were going to win by making the remaining guys run away. On the downside, I feel like your combat rooms could have been more interesting, and I felt that we were more heavily railroaded that in any of the other sessions. I know the the railroading was mostly due to this being a mini, but I wish some of that been averted somehow. Ryan's Notes: Lot of fun overall, very cool environmental and immersive aspects. LOVED your voice work and ambient sounds. I don't actually mind being railroaded a little so long as it's not something glaringly out of character. Still, probably best to keep it to a minimum. The Fixer Elixirs were a nice deviation from our normal healing brews. The pregnancy trap scenario was interesting, but felt kinda weird. Are these bandits really that desperate to put an extremely pregnant woman in a position of aggravating a drow, a minotaur, a dragonborn and a warforged, all armed? I would’ve liked to have been able to find out a little more about what was actually going on in Candlekeep, which would probably have been easier if friggin’ Moloch didn’t make a point of wrecking every damn thing before anyone could look at it. Was that poem thing significant at all? Shelley's notes I thought it was really fun. I was definitely surprised that we were on a suicide mission, which while I didn't actually like that bit, it shows that (at least to me) you were good at telling the story and getting us to go where we were supposed to go. And you allowed enough freedom, I think, to let us do what we wanted; but, I've never really played before. Molach did seem allowed to destroy a lot of stuff though. I liked it. I could see everything you meant really well and the story worked out. Not any gaping plot holes that I noticed. * PP1 **Bryce, I'm glad you found a character you liked, but you need to have some kind of fail safes to keep him out of the trouble you run into later: not being able to restrain yourself from killing everything can work if you have a party member or two with sufficient power to calm or restrain you, otherwise you'll ending up splitting the party's goals when smashy smashy isn't the best option. Of course, this goes both ways if the odd man out is the pacifist. **I tried requiring everyone to have a reason to be together, but even then, without making these characters together, as in, in the same room and talking about it, I don't feel like they're ever going to be more than a rather hodge-podge mix of protagonists with their own clashing individual stories. **I very purposefully pushed you through Baldur's Gate and the Creeping Vine tent as quickly as possible. I saw what happend in Ray's campaign when he gave us a whole city to explore and didn't want a repeat. Of course this is mostly an issue for minis, not full campaigns. **I regret not giving the rat man more items. I didn't know what to give him at the time, but certainly have some now :P **I knew the ritual ability was more powerful than probably any feat or utility spell you guys would have, but I wanted to give you a strong reason to stay together, and also keep combat moving quickly without a bunch of miss rounds. Again, easier to get away with during a mini. Although something like this on a more temporary scale could be fun in a full campaign. **I never realized how ranged enemies kept everyone from completely bunching together into an immobile knot! **As far as the ending, like I've said, I fully intended you guys to fight the hybrid mech. Just solving the puzzle and banging on his suit really threw off the rhythm I wanted. Also, I wanted the self-destruct to be a group decision, but the group was starting to split up due to strong diference in character personalities I think ***RK: It is pretty telling that the party split along the law-chaos alignment line.